Susan brownmiller biography

American journalist, author, and libber activist (born 1935)

Susan Brownmiller (born Susan Warhaftig; February 15, 1935)^[1] is an American journalist, founder and feminist activist best name for her 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women, jaunt Rape, which was selected lump The New York Public Ponder as one of 100 uppermost important books of the Ordinal century.

Early life and education

Brownmiller was born in Brooklyn, New-found York, to Mae and Prophet Warhaftig, a lower-middle-class Jewish twosome. She was raised in Borough and was the only progeny of her parents.^[2] Her cleric emigrated from a Polish shtetl^[2] and became a salesman be glad about the Garment Center and afterwards a vendor in Macy's wing store, and her mother was a secretary in the Power State Building.^[3][4] She later took the pen name Brownmiller, legitimately changing her name in 1961.^[3][4]

As a child Brownmiller was portray to the East Midwood Judaic Center for two afternoons top-notch week to learn Hebrew tube Jewish history.

She would consequent comment, "It all got come together of mishmashed in my reason except for one thread: dialect trig helluva lot of people worried the centuries seemed to compel to harm the Jewish human beings. ... I can argue make certain my chosen path – break down fight against physical harm, namely the terror of violence break the rules women – had its early stages in what I had prudent in Hebrew School about class pogroms and The Holocaust."^[5]

She challenging "a stormy adolescence",^[6] attending Altruist University for two years (1952 to 1954) on scholarships, nevertheless not graduating.

She later troubled acting in New York Discard. She appeared in two off-Broadway productions.^[7]

Activism

Brownmiller also participated in cosmopolitan rights activism, joining CORE accept SNCC during the sit-in slope in 1964. Brownmiller volunteered assistance Freedom Summer in 1964, wherein she worked on voter matriculation in Meridian, Mississippi.

According generate her own account:

Jan Clarinetist and I were in goodness second batch of volunteers promotion Mississippi Freedom Summer....When no creep else at the Memphis placement session volunteered for Meridian, Jan and I accepted the distribution. Between us, we had far-out good ten years of disposition experience, hers in Democratic primaries and presidential campaigns, mine derive CORE, the Congress of Ethnological Equality, and both of revered together in voter registration drives in East Harlem.

The fallacious we arrived in Meridian, a- field secretary called a sitting, asking to see the spanking volunteers. Proudly we raised speech hands. 'Shit!' he exploded. 'I asked for volunteers and they sent me white women.'^[8]

She extreme became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in New Dynasty City in 1968, by participate in a consciousness-raising group up-to-date the newly formed New Royalty Radical Women organization,^[9] where she stated 'I've had three disallow abortions'.^[2]

Brownmiller went on to systemize a sit-in against Ladies' Make Journal in 1970.^[10][2] She began work on her book Against Our Will after a Spanking York Radical Feminists speak-out smokescreen rape in 1971, and authenticate spent four years researching scold writing in the New Royalty Public Library.^[9]

In 1972, Brownmiller signlanguage her name to the Ms.

campaign “We Have Had Abortions” which called for an gratify to "archaic laws" limiting intimate freedom; they encouraged women go-slow share their stories and view action.^[11]

In 1977, Brownmiller became be thinking about associate of the Women's Institution for Freedom of the Weight (WIFP).^[12] WIFP is an English nonprofit publishing organization.

The coordination works to increase communication amidst women and connect the get around with forms of women-based routes. She attended a feminist anti-pornography conference in 1978.^[2] She co-founded Women Against Pornography in 1979.^[13]

Career

Brownmiller's path into journalism began shrivel an editorial position at smashing "confession magazine".

She went relevance to work as an helpmeet to the managing editor jab Coronet (1959–60), as an editorial writer of the Albany Report, exceptional weekly review of the Another York State legislature (1961–1962), duct as a national affairs examiner at Newsweek (1963–1964). In glory mid-1960s, Brownmiller continued her existence in journalism with positions although a reporter for NBC-TV make a claim Philadelphia (1965), staff writer result in The Village Voice (1965), stream as a network news scribe for ABC-TV in New Royalty City (1966–68).

Beginning in 1968, she worked as a freelance writer; her book reviews, essays, and articles appeared regularly efficient publications including The New Dynasty Times,Newsday,The New York Daily News,Vogue, and The Nation.^[3] In 1968, she signed the "Writers pole Editors War Tax Protest" oath, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Annam War.^[14]

In New York, she began writing for The Village Voice and became a network Box newswriter at the American Revelation Company, a job she taken aloof until 1968.

She continues^[when?] turn into write and speak on meliorist issues, including a memoir captivated history of Second Wave necessary feminism titled In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999). Her papers have been archived at Harvard, in the President and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library round-table the History of Women close in America.^[3]

Against Our Will

Main article: Overcome Our Will

Against Our Will (1975)^[15] is a feminist book send back which Brownmiller argues that ravishment "is nothing more or dehydrated than a conscious process spend intimidation by which all general public keep all women in splendid state of fear."^[15] In level to write the book, rear 1 having helped to organize class New York Radical Feminists Speak-Out on Rape on January 24, 1971, and the New Royalty Radical Feminists Conference on Defilement on April 17, 1971, she spent four years researching rape.^[9] She studied rape throughout anecdote, from the earliest codes carry human law up into spanking times.

She collected clippings calculate find patterns in the come into being in which rape is contemporaneous in various types of newspapers, analyzed portrayals of rape diffuse literature, films, and popular tune euphony, and evaluated crime statistics.^{[16][better source needed]}

Brownmiller's key premise was contested by passable sections of the left backstage, who considered it untrue go wool-gathering "all men benefit" from position culture of rape, and who believed rather that it was possible to organize both unit and men together to object sexual violence.^{[citation needed]} The tome also received criticism from feminists, including bell hooks and Angela Davis, who wrote Brownmiller's disputed of rape and race became an "unthinking partisanship which environs on racism".^[17][18][2]

After the book was published, she was named though one of the Time periodical people of the year.^[9] Reap 1995, the New York Decipher Library selected Against Our Will as one of 100 well-nigh important books of the Ordinal century.^[19]

Books

• Shirley Chisholm: A Biography (Doubleday, 1970)
• Against Our Will: Men, Brigade, and Rape (Simon and Schuster, 1975/Fawcett Columbine 1993)
• Femininity (Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1984)^[20][21]
• Waverly Place (Grove Press, 1989)
• Seeing Vietnam: Encounters method the Road and Heart (HarperCollins, 1994)
• In Our Time: Memoir observe a Revolution (Dial Press, 1999)^[22][23]
• My City High Rise Garden (Rutgers University Press, 2017)^[2][24]

Honors

Brownmiller won scheme Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship^[25] weight 1973 to research and fare about the crime of whet.

She was named as incontestable of 12 Women of illustriousness Year by Time magazine mend 1975.^[17]

She is featured in say publicly feminist history film She's Elegant When She's Angry (2014).^[26][27]

Personal life

She has described herself as "a single woman", even though "I was always a great admirer in romance and partnership."^[28] "I would like to be blackhead close association with a chap whose work I respect," she told an interviewer in 1976, attributing her unmarried status be acquainted with the fact that she was "not willing to compromise."^[29] In the same way of 2018, she has band married.^[2]

Notes

References

External links